


and upon my lips is a prayer

by sunforgrace



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode Fix-It: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, First Kiss, Human Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Parallels, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Pre-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Reunions, Season/Series 15, The Empty (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:00:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunforgrace/pseuds/sunforgrace
Summary: "Reverse Anna barn scene where instead of getting his grace back Cas appears fully human." -@heller-jensenDean is sitting in a barn, surrounded by painted runes and sigils.Bobby isn’t sitting next to him, this time.He’s all alone.He waits for the thunder, the rattling.It never comes.He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but he knows that the hours pass, because it’s dark when he finally raises his head to look around.It was a long shot anyway, he knows that.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 91





	and upon my lips is a prayer

**Author's Note:**

> this is INCREDIBLY short but I was inspired by this post: https://sunforgrace.tumblr.com/post/635192870348931072/dean-sitting-in-a-barn-surrounded-by-painted and decided to post this ficlet here.

Dean is sitting in a barn, surrounded by painted runes and sigils. 

Bobby isn’t sitting next to him, this time.

He’s all alone. 

He waits for the thunder, the rattling.

It never comes.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but he knows that the hours pass, because it’s dark when he finally raises his head to look around. 

It was a long shot anyway, he knows that.

But he can still feel the hollow in his chest, that’s been growing and growing. Some day it will consume him. The emptiness inside him. And this kind of empty isn’t from the trauma, the guilt, that gnawing, carving thing he’d carried within him out of Hell. This emptiness has a root, a root of black that stretches and twists through him.

He knows where it comes from.

Dean lowers his head into his hands, like he did in the After. Sitting on the floor of that room and unable to move, unable to pick up the phone. Unable to do anything except give in to the wrenching sobs that rise up from his chest.

“I’m sorry, Cas,” he whispers into the empty air. Not quite a prayer, because can it count as a prayer if it’s just him, speaking out into the empty space between where no one can hear him.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.”

And it should have been him. It should have been him who went. Of all of them, Cas deserved to be saved.

And that’s how he died, saving Dean.

All along, it had been about saving him, hadn’t it? Everything Cas ever did, all he sacrificed.

Because he loved him.

Cas loved him.

And Dean would never have the chance to even say it back. Fuck, Cas deserved to know he was loved. He loves him so much it, it’s an ache that he carries, a physical thing that claws it’s way in first thing upon waking up and holds on until his last moments before sleep at night.

He doesn’t sleep much these days. 

I love you, 

I love you,

I love you.

It’s like a prayer. Because someone should know. The world around him, the universe itself. Someone needs to know that Castiel was loved.  
He still is.

Then there’s a creak of wood, it makes Dean lift his head automatically to the door.

There’s no great winds, no shaking of the very ground beneath him. No lights exploding and sparks flying and a cosmic sense of awe.

But what there still is, is the feeling that someone he knows and who knows him is walking through the door.

The door creaks as it opens. The footfalls are soft on the packed dirt. It is a quiet, human entrance. 

Castiel walks towards him, just as steady and sure as the first time he ever laid eyes on him. The real first time. When he had been a howling, twisted thing off the rack, and an Angel had looked at him and laid a hand on his shoulder and he’d known, he’d just known, he was meant to be saved. 

Cas walks right up to him, just like he did so many years ago.

He smiles, a slow, sunny thing. It crinkles his eyes and pulls on the lines of his face, the signs of age, of human exposure to time.

Dean knows there will be more lines, years he will get to see.

He’s up without realizing his feet have moved, as if in a daze, as if in a dream. And he’s getting right up in Cas’ personal space. His hands reach up towards Cas’ chest, but there’s no knife this time. He uses them to reach out, to touch, to grip Cas as tight as he can. He’s right here, alive and human and Cas.

He gets to feel what shape Cas’ mouth makes as he whispers, “Hello, Dean.” Soft and real and completely perfect. He breathes them in, brushes them against his lips. Dean has never heard a more perfect sentence in his life.

When he speaks, it’s a ghost of a kiss along Cas’ mouth. Like a benediction, like a prayer.

“Cas.”

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: Well.  
> This was posted in the wee hours of the night before 15x20 aired - only a little after midnight, ushering us into that final Thursday, the day Supernatural would close it's final chapter. It was based upon my inspiration from a tumblr post that engaged the muse, as well as the collective excitement flooding the fandom at the time. It's rather ironic, that the same promo images of a barn that inspired this little ficlet would turn out to not represent the bookend parallel of a great love story that I had envisioned, but simply The End.
> 
> If you're searching for comfort in this time through fanfiction, I completely understand and am right there with you. I don't intend to be presumptuous, but I hope if you've come across this little ficlet, posted in those late hours of the night when everyone was so hopeful, or perhaps even my other speculative ending fic written during the quarantine hiatus, that I could provide some of that comfort. These two characters, who have been cherished within fandom for so long, deserved better. They deserved the happiness in the being, and the happiness in the having.
> 
> I will not stop writing. And I hope to come back with more stories for these two characters who will always be in our hearts; both through entirely new adventures in different worlds (where other Cas' get to have that crack in their chassis, or perhaps get to experience being something other than an Angel entirely <3) and within the world of the Cas and Dean we came to love so dearly. This ending will not keep me from exploring the story of their love at different times and in different ways within this world, or in giving them the ending I had hoped for them, or working with the canon ending to allow them to finally have the true happiness they both deserved to share with one another.
> 
> Much love to you all. <3 Thank you for allowing me to share my words with you, and for reading them. I hope to share even more in the future.  
> Thank you for everything, SPN family.


End file.
